new edgebanding technology

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I need to improve our edgebanding capabilities to be able to change glue colors faster. This lead to me finding out about advanced hot air and laser technologies that have become the new thing. It all seems to hinge around a new edgebanding technology from Rehau. So far, my search has only turned up 1 hot air bander (Hebrock) and 1 laser bander (Homag). Are there others? And no, we're not talking about Virutex style hot air.

I believe biesse has a hot air bander. My understanding is the lazer is already passe becasue the hot air gives better adhesion throughout the part, while the lazer oscilates and does not achieve 100% even adhesion.

The process you describe is a function of the banding you chose to apply. Polymer companies have devised a process where banding can essentially be welded to the substrate. This can be done a couple different ways; 1. Concentrated Hot Air 2. Laser or Plasma 3. NIR. Keep in mind this process is for the narrow field of co-extruded or specialty polymers. Quantities can be high and selection can be narrow so understand the product you want to apply first.
The drive for this technology has surrounded glue line visibility most commonly associated with high gloss applications. Traditional EVA's in some cases left much to be desired.
At HolzHer we have both L-Tronic NIR (similar to laser but much less costly) for laser style banding and our standard Glu-Jet which will run all EVA, PO, and PUR style glues in pellet or cartridge. Interestingly enough the majority of customers who speak to us about hot air / laser machines find they like the solution of PUR Glue in a standard machine much better. Equally good glue line to hot air / laser with the advantage of water and heat resistant edge.
I have posted a link to our website where you can learn about the different technologies.

Derek,
We have the "hot air" Airtech from Brandt, we also looked at the Biesse and Homag machines. There are three companies you can source EB from. Rehau and Woodtape both have new lines in Canada. Rehau has about 24 stock colors, Woodtape is working on their stock list. Both are just getting inventory now. There is also a company out of Germany. The edge is as close to perfect as you will see. The architects love it and we just did a major corporate office where we subbed the fused edge for color through laminate at about a 10k savings to the customer and the Architect loved it.

It is taking awhile to get the inventory up to stock (our machine is a year old).

Our machine requires zero part cleanup so that is a huge time savings.

We have a lot of time in sourcing and testing edging and dialing it in. We are sampling architects and promoting it and everyone that see the parts loves it.

We needed an additional air compressor for the machine.

We needed to replace our edgebander anyway so the financial jump was not that much more for us.
A-

Can your new edgebander run other edgebanding besides the new stuff? Or did you keep your old bander, and you're only running new banding on the new machine and are still running old banding on the old machine? I guess what I'm asking would be, is there a standard pre-glued banding alternative that can be run on the new machines while we wait for inventory, and would the standard pre-gluded banding be of adequate quality?

Derek,
We can run any type of edge banding except "Preglued", its a standard edge bander and can apply glue using edging made from wood, pvc, abs, laminate or use the extruded layer of the hot air/laser tech banding, the "fusion" layer.

You need to be careful with the laminates like Laminart Oyster shield and do some trimming after or expect low tool life. It does really well on the pattern laminates with ridges because the copy wheel is about 1/4" in.

After speaking with a couple of different reps, I understand what you are saying and I have my head around this thing now. The laser/infrared/hot air unit that activates the fusion layer on the new style banding is either an additional station or an interchangeable unit, depending on the manufacturer. As you might expect, everything that comes after the gluing process is the same as its always been. Using Holzher as an example, somebody could buy a bander with standard gluing technology, and later on spend the 25k or whatever for their infrared heater unit, swap it out for their cartridge unit in a few minutes, and be running new edgebanding. No need to pop for the gluer yet, but you have the capability later on if you want it. With somebody else's machine, same story, you just leave a hole on the chasis until later. Cool stuff, I hope the technology takes off.

Derek,
The technology is there for all the mass production companies, its at least 5-6 years old. We are at the chicken and edge stage of the banding is small quantities is not there yet. But for a project you have time on the minimums are not that bad. We brought in 10 rolls of a few colors that we use and if someone wants a "better edge" we give it to them if they want to switch to a color we have.

We expect to be seeing it in more specs in the next few months for private work.

I saw a set of plans today that is another office for a company we did last fall and the "heat fused edge" is specified.

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